SIA Showcase for Readers and Writers discussion
Member showcase A through G
>
Steven Bright: eBook Formatting in Microsoft Word and Cover Design Tips
date
newest »
newest »
All good advice, for sure.For my e-books, I've been using a bit of software called (I believe) Kindle Writer, which actually makes it incredibly easy to build a nice, professional looking Kindle mobi... if you know bit of basic code stuff, that is.
If not, there's a slight learning curve.
Yea, other good software are Calibre and Sigi. I'm also proficient in HTML and CSS but I still prefer formatting in Microsoft Word as long as eBook is concerned.
Definitely not knocking Word. I design my print manuscripts in it, and it's a wonderful, versatile program.
I wrote most of my novel in Word, but once I moved to Scrivener, I won't go back to Word - although I can appreciate that most people could easily use it very effectively. I like to be able to write my chapters out of order, use the front matter documents, and I have easy access to the character sketches, location information, and research. It just has everything in one place. The one downside is it's very difficult to get the "Look Inside" feature on Amazon to format correctly when compiling through Scrivener. Have others had this issue?
Yea, Microsoft Word is really a versatile program. As for the downside of compiling in Scrivener, I do not use it and hence can't tell. But I'm sure others who have that experience will soon come sure with us.
I actually prefer Pages. Find it more intuitive and a lot easier to manage than Word. But that could just be me...
Jane wrote: "I actually prefer Pages. Find it more intuitive and a lot easier to manage than Word. But that could just be me..."Hmm, interesting. Never even thought trying Pages. Thanks, Miss Jane!
Annnd (belated) welcome, Mr Steven!! ^_^
I just write in Word (any version, doc or docx), use page breaks for chapters with two returns before and after the chapter heading, then upload to Draft2digital. It does all the rest, creating epub, mobi and PDF.You just have to watch using "insert symbol" for em-dashes. They sometimes don't come across. Better to just use two hyphens, and the program converts them to an em-dash.
As an indie author, properly formatting and editing your manuscript should be your highest priority.
To do this rightly using Microsoft Word, the following guides will be of great help to you in professionally formatting your manuscript to acceptable standard of major eBook publishing and distribution platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct, Smashwords and Draft2Digital.
1. Save the manuscript in Microsoft word as a .doc document (Save As 1997-2003).
2. Properly edit and proof read, as well as removing all tab and spacebar spaces. To do this, ON the Show/Hide MS word feature to guide you.
3. Create and use custom styles to format the front and end matter, body or content, first paragraphs, and other important sections of the ebook.
4. You can directly apply Bold, Italics, and Underline where necessary.
5. Create the working Table of Content using the Bookmarking method which converts well in both Smashwords and Amazon KDP Direct unlike inserting table of content through Reference menu which is not acceptable in Smashwords.
6. Simulate the eBook with your eBook reader or smart phone device to have a feel of it. If you are convinced it is great, congrats. You can then go ahead to publish it.